Archive | August, 2010

Not too long ago I came across the work of Chris Powers, who put together an animated video of one of our songs, The Prodigal. I was moved by the way he used simple animation to illustrate the song in a powerful way. Recently Chris told me he had animated another one of our songs, The Gospel Song. Here are the lyrics: Holy God in love became Perfect man to bear my blame On the cross he took my sin By his death I live again. In the video, Chris also added a portion of a message by John Piper where he pleads with unbelievers to trust in the finished work of Christ for their sins. The Gospel Song was first written for a musical …

I just finished reading The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chablis and Daniel Simons. No, it’s not a Christian book, nor is it a book for people responsible for leading congregational worship (the target audience of my blog). But I think it’s relevant to both. The book was named for the video above. If you haven’t watched it, you should now. The authors describe the purpose of their book in the introduction: The Invisible Gorilla is a book about six everyday illusions that profoundly influence our lives: the illusions of attention, memory, confidence, knowledge, cause, and potential. These …

A while back I received an email from Paul asking: One of the central roles of a worship band is to help the congregation to sing. Do you have advice on how a worship band can best cue the congregation? What kinds of things could I tell my instrumentalists and singers to do to help the people come in on the first words of a song or verse? How would you in general encourage congregational singing? Paul’s question highlights one of the differences between leading a group of people to praise God from their hearts and simply playing and singing music for them. While people can certainly join along as we play our songs, it’s helpful when we make …